The effects of active worrying on working memory capacity

According to the attentional control theory, worry, a crucial component of anxiety, impairs task performance through its direct effect on working memory capacity (WMC) by using up the limited resources available for performance thus reducing attentional control. We tested this hypothesis in the current study by examining the causal influence of active worrying on WMC in a sample of undergraduate university students (n?=?64) assigned either to a worry condition or to a non-worry control condition. Participants performed a change detection task before and after the worry/control manipulation. Mediation analyses showed that the level of self-reported worry mediated the effects of condition on change in WMC as demonstrated by the significant indirect effect of worry and the resulting non-significant direct effect of condition on change in WMC. Similar results were obtained when using state anxiety measures as mediating factors. Results of the current study are amongst the first to demonstrate that worry impairs WMC and as such have important implications for understanding the impact of worry.     

Wearable Cameras Are Useful Tools to Investigate and Remediate Autobiographical Memory Impairment: A Systematic PRISMA Review

Autobiographical memory, central in human cognition and every day functioning, enables past experienced events to be remembered. A variety of disorders affecting autobiographical memory are characterized by the difficulty of retrieving specific detailed memories of past personal events. Owing to the impact of autobiographical memory impairment on patients’ daily life, it is necessary to better understand these deficits and develop relevant methods to improve autobiographical memory. The primary objective of the present systematic PRISMA review was to give an overview of the first empirical evidence of the potential of wearable cameras in autobiographical memory investigation in remediating autobiographical memory impairments. The peer-reviewed literature published since 2004 on the usefulness of wearable cameras in research protocols was explored in 3 databases (PUBMED, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar). Twenty-eight published studies that used a protocol involving wearable camera, either to explore wearable camera functioning and impact on daily life, or to investigate autobiographical memory processing or remediate autobiographical memory impairment, were included. This review analyzed the potential of wearable cameras for 1) investigating autobiographical memory processes in healthy volunteers without memory impairment and in clinical populations, and 2) remediating autobiographical memory in patients with various kinds of memory disorder. Mechanisms to account for the efficacy of wearable cameras are also discussed. The review concludes by discussing certain limitations inherent to using cameras, and new research perspectives. Finally, ethical issues raised by this new technology are considered.     

Real Definitions

I offer and defend an account of real definitions. I put forward two versions of the account, one formulated in terms of the notion of generalised identity and of a suitable notion of grounding (RD1), and the other one formulated in terms of the former notion and of a suitable notion of comparative joint‐carvingness (RD2). Given a plausible assumption, (RD1) and (RD2) turn out to be equivalent. I give a sketch of a unified account of the three notions involved in (RD1) and (RD2) from which the assumption can be derived.     

Group motives in threatening contexts: When a loyalty conflict paradoxically reduces the influence of an anti‐discrimination ingroup norm

The influence of pro‐ versus anti‐discrimination ingroup norms on Swiss nationals' attitudes towards foreigners was investigated as a function of national identification and perceived material ingroup threat. As predicted, results revealed a significant interaction between identification and threat: High identifiers showed a more negative attitude than low identifiers mainly when perceived threat was high. In other words, high identifiers conformed to the pro‐discrimination norm, but showed a counter‐conformity effect for the anti‐discrimination norm. Additional results revealed that high identifiers actually disagreed with the anti‐discrimination norm when perceived threat was high, but that they were more attached to the ingroup. These findings suggest that when the ingroup norm is not an appropriate response to an ingroup threat (i.e. anti‐discrimination norm), high identifiers find themselves in a loyalty conflict: they are unable to simultaneously conform to the group norm and protect the group. This conflict was resolved through a compensatory mechanism: High identifiers distanced themselves from the ingroup norm in order to protect the group (i.e. by increasing negative attitudes towards foreigners) but reinforced other ingroup ties (i.e. by increasing attachment to the ingroup values). Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Development of children's mental representations: effects of age, sex, and school experience

In the present study mental representations in drawings by 158 young children, ages 2 1/2 to 6 yr. old were analysed. The aim was to investigate whether the accuracy of mental representations increased with age and how this development progressed. Also tested were whether the inferred mental representations differed for boys and girls and whether preschool experience affected the drawings. As expected, mental representation increased in complexity with age as measured by Goodenough's score, and girls' mental representations (drawings) were significantly more elaborate than boys. Moreover, attending school early seemed to affect mental representations of the 3-yr.-olds but not the 4-yr.-olds. Results are discussed in terms of internal and external factors in mental representation in drawing a man.     

Equivalent effects of grouping by time, voice, and location on response timing in verbal serial memory

The grouping of list items is known to improve serial memory accuracy and constrain the nature of temporal errors. A recent study (M. T. Maybery, F. B. R. Parmentier, & D. M. Jones, 2002) showed that grouping results in a temporal organization of the participants' responses that mimics the list structure but not the timing of its presentation. Here the authors tested the prediction that the temporal grouping of responses should yield the same pattern of response time (RT) irrespective of the method of grouping at presentation. Comparing temporal, location, and voice grouping, the results show that although these methods impact on recall accuracy to varying degrees, all 3 conditions produce significant and equivalent peaks in RT at the first position of each group. The RT data were accurately simulated through a model based on ACT-R's (J. R. Anderson & M. Matessa, 1997) basic principles. Altogether, the data suggest that the temporal organization of responses in verbal serial recall results from (a) declarative knowledge about the list's structure that is independent of the perceptual means by which grouping is induced at presentation and (b) the level of activation of the items per se.     

The development of facial emotion recognition: the role of configural information

The development of children's ability to recognize facial emotions and the role of configural information in this development were investigated. In the study, 100 5-, 7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds and 26 adults needed to recognize the emotion displayed by upright and upside-down faces. The same participants needed to recognize the emotion displayed by the top half of an upright or upside-down face that was or was not aligned with a bottom half that displayed another emotion. The results showed that the ability to recognize facial emotion develops with age, with a developmental course that depends on the emotion to be recognized. Moreover, children at all ages and adults exhibited both an inversion effect and a composite effect, suggesting that children rely on configural information to recognize facial emotions.     

Semantics for Analytic Containment

In 1977, R. B. Angell presented a logic for analytic containment, a notion of relevant implication stronger than Anderson and Belnap's entailment. In this paper I provide for the first time the logic of first degree analytic containment, as presented in [2] and [3], with a semantical characterization—leaving higher degree systems for future investigations. The semantical framework I introduce for this purpose involves a special sort of truth-predicates, which apply to pairs of collections of formulas instead of individual formulas, and which behave in some respects like Gentzen's sequents. This semantics captures very general properties of the truth-functional connectives, and for that reason it may be used to model a vast range of logics. I briefly illustrate the point with classical consequence and Anderson and Belnap's tautological entailments.     

Exploring the suffix effect in serial visuospatial short-term memory

The suffix effect—the loss of recency induced by a redundant end-of-list item—was studied in a visuospatial serial recall task involving the memory for the position of dots on a screen. A visuospatial suffix markedly impaired recall of the last to-be-remembered dot. The impact on recall was roughly of equal magnitude whether the suffix shared attributes with the to-be-remembered dots (Experiment 1) or was visually distinct (Experiments 2 and 3). Although the presence of a tone suffix also impaired serial memory for the last items in the sequence, the impact of a visuospatial suffix was more marked, implying a specific as well as a possible general effect of suffix in the visuospatial domain (Experiment 4). The suffix effect seems not to be a phenomenon confined to verbal material but rather a universal phenomenon possibly related to grouping.